Boeing needs to sponsor more of this
QUICKLY!
Then again the problems with the 787's batteries might be some silly RoHS regulations that promote Tin (Sn) over Lead (Pb) for solder.
A team from the University of Southern California (USC) has built a lithium battery that provides three times the power capacity of conventional designs, with a recharge time of just ten minutes and a predicted long life-span. "It's an exciting research. It opens the door for the design of the next generation lithium-ion …
"Bugger the neurotoxins, I want reliability!"
Personally I suspect the worst offender for this was the tetraethyl lead additive they put in petrol. That's been banned for decades. Highly toxic, absorbed through the skin and as a combustion product from the exhaust already vaporized for easy ingestion.
But with the modern view of H&S you can't doubt it was a factor.
Again IMHO the release of Mercury from badly disposed of florescent tubes will be a much bigger health hazard, but that's just me. Maybe people will get the disposal chain worked out in time.
Better battery technology is the key to making electric vehicles a viable reality.
(Before anyone starts saying "so what the elecricity still comes burning from coal anyway": it doesn't have to. The electricity I use at my house is small solar and big hydro, and there's always the clean nuclear option.)
whilst fast recharge helps cars, the overriding issue is not *power* density - that is already high enough to fly an aircraft, just not for long.
The overriding problem is energy *density*, and even at top theoretical limits, its still not enough to make electric cars viable replacements for more than short range cars.
That doesn't make sense, if petrol cars are viable, then electricity stored as a hydrocarbon using a fuel cell shows it IS viable to have an electric car, we just need to stop looking at batteries as the only way to store energy for electric cars... All we need is a novel storage cell for electricity that is not dangerous, my current vote is hydrocarbon fuel cells, with batteries/capacitors for regenerative breaking etc...
well I should have said BATTERY electric cars..
Energy consumption is related to miles AND weight, and energy in batteries is also related to weight.. which is why there is a reasonable theoretical upper limit to range of a battery vehicle.
No matter how much we all want electric cars to work, it is to be understood that all breakthroughs come from technology or physics that already exists and has theoretical potential to deliver: right now there is no technology that exists that has even the theoretical potential to deliver the sort of energy density an off grid electrical transport system needs that is effective safe efficient and within reasonable cost bounds..
Or we would have had one 50 years ago.
Electricity turns out to be the easiest thing to move around via wires., but the hardest thing to store in bulk.
Chemical fuel is the best of the rest, but synthetic chemical fuel is still several times more expensive than pumping it out if the ground..
I wish it were not so: the facts are that it is.
Something missing - voltage?
Am I missing something here? If they're not saying what voltage the battery is operating at, the mA and mAh rating cannot be usefully converted into J and W so it's not possible to say anything about power and energy density.
as @itzman said, the big issue with batteries isn't power density, it's energy density. A three-fold increase is nothing to sneeze at, but still, improving a Lithium battery from 1.8MJ/kg* to 5.4MJ/kg still compares poorly to petrol at approx 46MJ/kg*
Having said that, current production electric cars get around (manufacturer-specified)180-250 miles per charge and (real-life) 100-150 miles per charge. So if that can really be tripled to a real-life 300-450 miles per charge, combined with a 10-minute recharge time AND 2000 charge cycles would make this a real alternative to petrol cars. **
So, to be expected in (current year + 5) for the next 10 years, and then when it arrives will have a battery costing more than the car?
*Wikipedia-sourced number caveat applies
** Even estimating conservatively 200 miles per charge (batteries are also powering heating and other gadgets after all), and 1000 charge cycles (half of what they claim), that gives a battery lifetime of 200,000 miles, so finally also a battery with a life expectancy that matches that of the rest of the car
The trouble is that countries like the US have lots of land area. Long haul is a REQUIREMENT for a viable car replacement since people are unlikely to keep two vehicles: a short-haul for intracity driving and a long-haul for the trips to other states. One vehicle would have to fit all.
@Charles9: I'm not sure I follow your logic. My wife and I each have a car, both used for a lot of local driving. When we travel long distances, we usually travel together in one car, else one of us stays home and drives the usual short distances.
Replacing one of our gas-burners with an electric car would be a (very) viable option.
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Did you not read the article? "A team from the University of Southern California (USC) has built a lithium battery that provides three times the power capacity of conventional designs". Same sized battery, three times the electrical capacity. The design needs more Lithium than conventional cells, but has a higher energy density.
The wording could have been better, but it's pretty clear from both the article and the links that this is about increasing the amount of lithium that can bind to the anode of a cell. More lithium = more mAh per cell = higher energy density. As an added bonus it supports higher current densities for charging.
This isn't the only attempt to improve density this way. There was similar research based on tin whiskers that was announced last year. Neither method adds significant weight to a cell so energy density is much improved.
>that provides three times the power capacity of conventional designs
Do you mean power, or do you mean energy (energy = power*time)? My devices are happy with the power currently supplied to them- to have them go longer on a single charge they require more energy. It isn't difficult, a school textbook should see you right. Textbook- a bit like a Kindle, but heavier and made out of dead trees. Second-hand copies are cheap on an on-line book retailer near you.
THIS IS YOUR JOB.
Spot on !
I was under the impression that, with all the articles already published on this subject, I was going to be able to find my new suparfast-charging extralong-lasting batteries any time soon.
And now I read they're still in research mode ? Humbug !
Get these things to market already !
P.S. : yeah, I know, easier said than done. But sheesh, one would think that there is enough market pressure on this particular subject to at least hear about upcoming new battery models, not just another lab story.
You dare speak against the holiness that is android and/or Samsung! Don't you realise they are faultless and perfect, and far superior in every way to all other phones, especially to the "fruity one"?
You must be holding it wrong. No wait - that's the other fanboi camp...
How does this compare to current li-ion batteries?
Saying you can charge it in 10 minutes is fairly irrelevant, if you have a 5Wh battery and you charge it with a charger capable of producing 5W (as is the case with all modern USB phone chargers) it will take at least an hour to charge. The only way to make it charge quicker is to use a bigger charger. The battery on my current phone is 8.7Wh, if the new style battery provides 3x that then that's 26.1Wh. To charge that with my 5W charger will take at least 5h12'. To get the charge time down to 10 minutes would take a 150W charger, i.e. something nearly 3 times the size of most laptop chargers.
The useful thing here is if they really have managed to treble the capacity but if this comes to market we'll see HTC produce phones with the same size batteries that last longer which will be ignored by the buying public. Then Apple will release an iPhone with the same battery life but the smaller size of battery will allow them to make the phone thinner. Then Samsung will copy Apple's lead and all we will have gained are slightly lighter phones that still need charging every day.
The only way to make it charge quicker is to use a bigger charger.
Yes you would need a dedicated charger, but that is not much of a problem, is it? 1. you still get higher battery capacity 2. faster charge is often suboptimal to battery performance so you don't really need to bother with it 3. if you did, 5W is tiny anyway. For example, 100W charger is considered entry-level size for LiPo batteries used in RC helicopters (larger than micro size). I would happily swap my LiPos for a new generation of batteries, if it gave me 3x flight times, even I do not get the benefits of faster charge. Which I would since 1000W charger and PSU (especially one built from servers PSUs bought on eBay) are not that very expensive either, considered the cost of things they are used to supply the power to.
Yes, but shortly after the batteries are given awards and endorsement contracts, the international battery union will revoke their membership for doping, and they will become a pariah and have to give all the awards back.
The new batteries will complain, stating the doping is widespread, and that they shouldn't be penalized for it - after all, look at all the doping in the semiconductor industry!